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Thursday, September 19, 2013
big damn recap
I'm not going to individually post for everything I've read since February. At this point, I'm pretty sure this page only exists as a personal log of what I've read (it's existed longer than Goodreads, and nobody tracks me here). A gift of a nook for Christmas let me go through lots of books I downloaded from the library, and our new building has a little library in the basement. Between those, and a couple real books, I've read:
All of Michael Connelly's novels published up to today. Echo Park was my favorite. Good characterization and dialogue. The novels which do not fit into one of his series tend to be a bit weaker than the rest, but Harry Bosch is still the king of the Connelly version of LA. Mickey Haller makes a good read, though his slippery ethics make me a little uncomfortable sometimes, but even he can't hold a candle to his half-brother the cop. They have a combined story coming out this fall, The Gods of Guilt, and I look forward to it, but more for the detective than the somewhat shady defense attorney. Haller's a fun character, but there's a pattern to all of his stories, while Bosch continues to get into new situations, with unique twists and clever plots.
The first two books in Sue Grafton's Alphabet series. A little dated, but fun. Made me wish more of her books were on the shelf downstairs.
I've caught up with Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce series (the most recent to date being Speaking From Among The Bones). Still entertaining, and he finally got to the twist I predicted in the first book, but I will have to wait until the next book (The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches), due out next year, for any resolution.
Craig Johnson continues to amaze me with Walt Longmire. I've read up to the short story Divorce Horse, wedged into the series between Hell Is Empty and As The Crow Flies, and, as always, Johnson inspires and intimidates me. As I read his books, I want to be able to write that well, and am constantly dogged by the feeling that I can't. However, Divorce Horse was a little disappointing. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. Too much guessing is left in the resolution (even calling it a "resolution" feels like a sham), and it feels too much like what it is: table scraps thrown out to keep ravening fans busy until the book release. I'm still two books (and a few short stories) behind in the series, but Steamboat Springs is due out next month. If I play my cards right, I think I'll be ready for it when it gets here.
Lamb, by Christopher Moore, is just as clever, funny, ribald, and entertaining as everything else I've read by him. I liked the new take on Jesus's youth (not being a religious person, I could tell there were several references I didn't get, but I was still pleased with the story and the references I did get), but I think the part that was most personally significant for me was the Author's Bio at the end, which assured me that Moore was a "late-blooming child prodigy" who published his first novel in his mid-thirties. That's about where I am, so I feel a little better about my late start in writing. Hopefully, I can get my book out to agents soon, and maybe I'll be a late-blooming child prodigy, too.
I think that's everything that matters. I've also been re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series on my nook, because sometimes I feel like reading, but I don't have a fresh book handy, and I've read that entire series so many times that I can dip in and out of it with aplomb, and not even care if I finish a chapter (though I usually do).Labels: decomposing bodies, demonic possession, ethics, girl power, mystery/detective, poison, western, young protagonists
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
Merry Christmas, Flavia
Title: I Am Half Sick of Shadows
Author: Alan Bradley
Bookmark: lizard in a stick
Christmas comes to Buckshaw, riding on the coat-tails of a film crew. The Colonel, increasingly desperate in his efforts to pay the bills, has allowed a production crew to set up shop in the family manor, with clear rules as to which areas are available to them and which are entirely off-limits (namely, the boudoir of his late wife and life's great love, Harriet). Hoping to leverage the star power of Phyllis Wyvern, the movie's headliner, the vicar of Bishop's Lacey arranges a showing of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene in Buckshaw's expansive foyer, selling tickets to the townspeople. Then a blizzard blocks the roads and seals off the estate during the show. Naturally, someone goes and gets themselves murdered.
Flavia is in the middle of dual festive chemical schemes: a fireworks show from Buckshaw's roof, and heavy smears of birdlime at the chimney entrances to capture Saint Nick and prove his existence once and for all to her noxious sisters. Luckily, she still has time to investigate the crime.
I love the series. I'm a big fan of Flavia, and Bradley. They are both very clever. This book is not the best showcase of their talents. Yes, it's still a lot of fun, and it's festively festivish, for what that's worth, but I felt like not as much effort had gone into the mystery of this outing. (is it still an outing if the entire novel takes place in Flavia's house?) I wouldn't go so far as to say that I was disappointed, but I wasn't as overwhelmed with this one as I had been earlier in the series. Maybe that's ok. You can't get better with every single effort, or you'll burn yourself out, and I look forward to seeing more of Flavia in the future.Labels: girl power, murder, mystery/detective, secrets
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Friday, July 13, 2012
Gypsies, scamps, and thieves
Title: A Red Herring Without Mustard
Author: Alan Bradley
Bookmark: library receipt
Remember the Angela Lansbury series "Murder, She Wrote"? My cousin said that she'd never go to Cabot Cove or go on vacation with Jessica Fletcher because "all her friends get killed." As much as I enjoy the Flavia de Luce books, I'm starting to wonder about the safety of the sleepy English village where she lives. By the series' own chronology, only a couple months have passed since the first book, and in that time (including this book) three people have been murdered, one savagely beaten, two cold cases involving the deaths of children have been uncovered, and in this book, during the course of her investigations, Flavia also cracks open an antiquities forging ring. I came from a much larger town, and in three decades, we've had maybe a dozen good murder cases. Bishop's Lacey had three in two months. Wow.
I mean, I get it--if she ages naturally, eventually she'll stop being an endearingly clever little girl and become a cloyingly clever teenager (with even fewer friends), but there has to be a good way around that, right?
Don't get me wrong--I still loved the book. Flavia starts by accidentally torching a gypsy's fortune-telling tent at the church bazaar, then offers a place to park her caravan on the family estate. When she discovers that the old woman has been beaten nearly to death, her quick actions save the gypsy's life, and she feels compelled (naturally) to find the culprit.
I liked that this book broke a couple patterns of the series, even though I missed some of those patterns (no chemistry-based revenge upon the evil sisters, far less time with Dogger), because it made things feel less formulaic. I've been asked "was it as good as the others? Was it better than the others?" and I don't really know how to answer. I like all of them; they're well-wrought stories with engaging characters and excellent humor. Reading each one of them makes me want to read the next one, write something, learn about chemistry, ride my bike, and find a dead body. What more could you ask from a murder mystery?Labels: girl power, murder, mystery/detective, young protagonists
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Tuesday, June 26, 2012
snips and snails and puppeteer's tales
Title: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
Author: Alan Bradley
bookmark: library receipt
I got a dirty look from my girlfriend when I acknowledged that I might be falling in love with a fictional eleven-year-old girl. Admittedly, it sounds terrible, but I would like to reiterate that I only want to hang out with young Flavia de Luce, talk science (I could learn so much!!), and trade barbs about her astoundingly horrible sisters. I have no sinister or untoward intentions, which is good, because she has a habit of pondering how to poison people in various and nefarious ways.
However, in this adventure she finds no clues of poison at the scene when a popular puppeteer is killed during a very public performance in Bishop's Lacey, and must thus investigate through more pedestrian avenues. She returns to the pit shed where the library stores old newspapers, visits again with Miss Cool, the local postmistress/candy purveyor, and gleans more wisdom from the eminently sympathetic and intriguing Dogger, but we find that Bishop's Lacey has much more to offer. Aunt Felicity has come to visit, the vicar is hiding something, Flavia seeks intel from a tea room and the undertaker next door, and an unusually artistic madwoman lives in the woods at the edge of town--the woods where an old gibbet sits slowly rotting in a clearing.
Inspector Hewitt and his trusty sergeants are once again on the case, but this time they are well behind Flavia, rather than simply arriving at the same conclusions via variant paths. Aunt Felicity, despite offering bewilderingly supportive words of encouragement, has some unconventional thoughts on raising children ("Children ought to be horsewhipped," she used to say, "unless they are going in for politics or the Bar, in which case they ought in addition to be drowned."). Daphne is, as usual, buried in books and evil looks, while vain Ophelia is courted by a German pilot and former POW who knows more than he tells, and is thoroughly obsessed with English literature.
Bradley--and Flavia--is consistently brilliant. I had to put the book aside for a week when I was nearing the conclusion, and if I hadn't been so occupied during that time, it would have driven me mad. I was still disappointed that when I returned to the library, someone else had checked out the next in the series, and I now have to wait even longer to find out what Flavia does next.Labels: girl power, hunky armed forces or government operatives, infidelity, mystery/detective, young protagonists
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Monday, June 11, 2012
sugar and spice and dead in a thrice
Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Author: Alan Bradley
Bookmark: library receipt
Enter Flavia de Luce. Youngest daughter of vanished (presumed dead) adventuress Harriet de Luce and British veteran Colonel de Luce, resident of the sprawling and storied Buckshaw Estate near Bishop's Lacey, England, expert in poisons, and chemical genius, aged eleven years. Easily the most entertaining, engaging, and endearing protagonist I've met in a long time. I want to hang out with Flavia. Scratch that--I want to be smart enough to cope with hanging out with Flavia. She still has a touch of youth's naivete, but for an eleven-year-old (or most adults), she's positively brilliant.
She is also, upon discovering a body in the family garden just in time to hear the dying word (and smell the suspiciously-odored dying breath), completely fascinated. Who was the red-headed rogue, what was he doing arguing with her father in the study late the night before, and how did he come to be dying amid the cucumber patch?
At first motivated only by her youthful (and occasionally misguided) curiosity, and later by her father's incarceration, Flavia sets out to learn answers to all her questions encountering more along the way, and discovers a decades-old philatelic scandal that reaches all the way to King George himself. Following her path, we are introduced to her home, the characters of her village ("Communicating with Ned was like exchanging cabled messages with a slow reader in Mongolia."), and her self-involved older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne. Mrs. Mullet comes by to do the cooking at the estate, and Dogger, a faithful and battle-addled army buddy of the Colonel's, tends the gardens (occasionally taking an opportunity to teach Flavia useful skills, like picking locks).
Inspector Hewitt, meanwhile, pursues a parallel investigation, learning many--if not all--of the same secrets as our young heroine, and begrudges her intermittent interruptions into his work.
There are many good reasons that Bradley won a Debut Dagger Award, but the simplest is this: Flavia is amazing. Add to that a colorful cast, delicious descriptions (see above, re: Ned), and a sweet, if sticky with death, narrative, and there's only one more thing to do: go get the next one. Excuse me; my library beckons.Labels: girl power, murder, mystery/detective, poison, science, young protagonists
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Thursday, April 07, 2011
Touch the sky
Title: Contact
Author: Carl Sagan
Many years ago, when the movie came out, I saw it. Somehow, I never got around to reading the book until recently, after I picked it up cheap at a library book sale. Parts of it are much more entertaining (from a slightly meta- standpoint) knowing what I've learned since the movie came out, like all of the references to legalized marijuana seen through the lens of knowledge that Sagan smoked a lot of weed. To anyone, the story is compelling. The scope changes a lot; early chapters discuss the development of our protagonist's young mind, and how she came to love math and science. Small chapter-starting snippets describe the voyage an alien signal takes across space, and the enormous structure from which it emanated. Later, after the signal's discovery, the scope goes global. Sagan theorizes (in an admittedly super-optimistic way that somehow just misses feeling naive) how a global community, still learning to trust one another, might receive such a message and try to use it. How nations might come together to build a device of unknown purpose and power, and of the subversive elements who might try to stop such an undertaking. And, because it's a novel about scientists who receive a cryptic message from the heavens, there is prolonged discussion of the schism--and similarities--between science and religion. Sagan manages to make these conversations sound balanced and reasoned for both sides.
The story was great. But that's not why I love the book. Well, it's not the only reason. Contact has earned a spot on my Shelf of Favorite Books because it is mainly a book about how great it is to be a scientist. It revels in its own nerdiness while making nerdiness seem like the most fantastic quality anyone could have. Ellie's discoveries, whether of a method to create artificial rubies to improve radio telescope performance, or the secret childhood tinkering to repair a broken radio, or her receipt of a message from an advanced alien society, are all written to sound exciting and fascinating. There is disappointment late in the book, but Ellie is unfazed. She has made more discoveries, and widespread acceptance is not as important as the discovery itself. By the end (SPOILER), there are many people who simply don't believe what she says she has done. Only those who experienced it with her know the truths that she knows. Everyone else is required to do something Ellie has never done: take it on faith. Sagan creates an overlap between science and faith, because there are times in both fields when you just can't prove what you know. But scientists know that someday, that proof will vindicate them. We proved that the earth orbits the sun, we proved that Pi is infinitely long, and we proved that all that we are is tied to a tiny molecule in every cell of our bodies. Given enough time, scientists can discover anything. Proving those mysteries doesn't destroy the magic; it is the magic.Labels: girl power, sci-fi, science, travel
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Most intense reality show, ever.
Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
I hate reality television. Hate it. Nothing about it seems real. I have often joked--joked!--that to really make a show called Survivor, it should be ten people and one knife thrown into a big pit.
But I was joking. Really.
In the future that Suzanne Collins found, they really do that, but there are twenty-four people, the pit is a huge outdoor arena that could include forests, desert, frozen tundra, lakes, and rivers, and there's a lot more knives. Oh, and all the contestants are kids age 13-17.
The Hunger Games are a tool used by the government to keep the people of the Twelve Districts in line. Watching them is mandatory. Participating is obligatory. Losing means dying, often horribly, at the hands of the other contestants. Some of the districts actually train children for this dubious honor, and those districts usually produce the winners. Those kids volunteer for the Games. Kids from the other districts are chosen by lottery, and usually end up as camera fodder.
Katniss Everdeen wasn't selected by the lottery, but she volunteers when her sister is, saving her sister's life. Katniss grew up poaching game in the forests surrounding her district, selling meat and berries in the black market with her hunting partner, a boy who obviously loves her and promises to take care of her family for her; Katniss's mother and sister depend entirely upon her work. She is joined from her district by a baker's son, and it eventually comes out that he also loves her. Ok, so there's some smarmy love triangle stuff going on, and it causes the complications for Kat you'd expect from a novel aimed at teens, but there's also a diabolically twisted government at work, and some interesting insights into how we entertain ourselves as a culture, and the skewed perspective people have with things they see on TV (at the end of the Games, people talk about major events during the competition in terms of what they were doing when it happened, i.e. "I was having my nails done when the boy from District 3 was killed with the spear"). There are a few things that don't quite seem to fit, like the skill and wisdom some of the characters have compared to their ages, but that can slide. Sometimes those can come from life experiences instead of years. Overall, it's really well done. I'd like to find the rest of the trilogy, because I suspect that it will somehow resolve some of the political machinations introduced in the first book, even though it's far more likely that they just screw around with the love triangle crap.Labels: action, dystopias, girl power, sci-fi, young adult
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
I don't melt in the rain, bitches
(HC release 06/09/09) Au: Katherine Howe Bookmark: the giant wrap-around back cover thingee on the ARC ed.
A very early reviewer (also being a staffer at my illustrious workplace) compared this book to Monster's of Templeton, and for this review was granted space on the splash page of the ARC. I have to agree with his assessment. Both stories boast a fairly similar heroine and both manage to bring elements of the fantastic into the "real" world where the books are set in a very casual way - as if giant lake monsters and actual witches in colonial Salem are everyday stuff. I think 'Monsters' accomplishes this in a more subtle way - as the townspeople don't seem particularly shocked by the monster (although the outside world is), while Connie is continually taken aback by what she finds as she pursues the Physick Book. I suppose this makes 'Physick' more realistic and 'Monsters' more fun.
Connie is a graduate student in colonial american history who gets sucked into trying to pull together her dead grandmother's abondoned, centuries-old house near Salem Mass., while her hippy-dippy mother spends her time reading auras on the west coast. All the while, she's supposed to be figuring out what to do for her dissertation. While picking through the items left in the house (an electricity and phone free house), she comes across the name of a Deliverance Dane. Luckily armed with professional-level histrical research skills and a cute boy who does restorations for a living, Connie tries to track down records of Deliverance, thinking that this little character would be a great start on her original disseration. She finds pretty quickly that efforts have been made to erase Deliverance from certain records completely, which brings her to understand that this character was not only involved in the Salem trials, but was also somehow set apart from the other accused women in the minds of the populace at the time. Meanwhile, we flash back to the 1690's and watch Deliverance herself moving through life, as well as eventually following some of her descendants. The result is a picture of a long line of no-nonsense ladies. Gotta love the girl power.
I liked each of the story lines in this novel, but in a different way. The modern day action moves more quickly (as you might expect), and draws you in with it's speed, but not necessarily with it's depth. The flashback scenes I found more compelling and think that their slower speed may have even helped add to the sense of stress, burden and foreboading that present themselves at different points in the history.
I'm not sure how to characterize this book. It's not "literature." It might be a historical novel with a thriller twist. I hate to call this chick-lit, because it's better than that, but I'm afraid the abundance of strong ladies in the book might scare off many gentlemen readers, just as if they were stuck in room with all the characters. Labels: books, fantasy, girl power, history, witches
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
If this exists, my children are so going there
Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
by Ally Carter
We rejoin Cammie and the rest of the Gallagher girls during her sophomore year of high school at the Gallagher Academy, a super-secret private school that teaches the students how to be spies (to the point where there's a designated language/dialect for each meal, and they're regularly kidnapped by teachers for class exercises).
Cammie's still recovering from her freshman year, where she had a forbidden relationship with a boy in town (just hand-holding and a kiss, you perverts) - the locals just think it's a snooty girls school, and for security reasons they prefer to keep things that way, so no outside relationships.
Following an exercise where the girls have to shake a tail and meet at a rendezvous point, they receive news that BOYS are COMING TO GALLAGHER. This is blasphemy. There are some male teachers, but it's been girls-only since its founding 100+ years ago. Plus Cammie's still trying to figure out what really happened when her father was killed during a mission several years ago; her mom, who also happens to be headmaster, and one of her teachers, know more than they're letting on.
So Cammie and her 3 friends (the nerd, the bombshell, and the rebel, of course) set out to find out what the boys are really doing at their school. As you may expect, this involves planting bugs and tracking devices in the boys' dormitory. Come on, they're spies, after all. And during all this the cutest of the boys has definitely taken an interest in Cammie, which she finds suspicious because her greatest talent is being essentially invisible (great for a spy, not so great for finding a boyfriend).
By the end of the book, very few of Cammie's questions have been answered, except that the boys are NOT up to no good. The powers-that-be decided that the girls should learn how to interact with boys/men before they're thrown out into the real spying world, so they imported some from the semi-rival equivalent boys' spy school. But to get to this point, there was another awesome kidnapping and chase sequence where the girls had to trust the boys and accept their help in order to recover potentially sensitive information revealing the names of all former students (aka a list of current spies).
Apparently the first book has been optioned for a movie by Disney. If they screw this up, heads will roll, even if I don't have the training to accomplish that.
I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL HERE.Labels: action, friendship, girl power, hunky armed forces or government operatives, martial arts, romance of the non-trashy variety, young adult, young protagonists
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
I really meant to keep up...
Sigh. This might be everything - I tried to slow down when I realized there was a backlog again. These are generally organized from good to bad-ish.
Playing James
by Sarah Mason
Mediocre reporter gets assigned to the police beat in a PR move for the department where they have her riding along with one of the officers (James). They’re both in relationships but have the traditional bickering and reluctant attraction, and eventually end up together. Really liked this one, and not just because they had British accents in my head while I was reading.
Rumble on the Bayou
by Jana DeLeon
Local small-town sherriff (daughter of the former sheriff) has to call in the feds when they discover a crocodile full of cocaine floating in a woman’s pool. Fed that's sent has history with the theoretical bad guy and doesn't understand small-town politics. Power struggles, deep hidden secrets, etc. Fun.
Stacked Deck
by Terry Watkins
Rather like what maybe happens to the girls from Gallagher Academy when they grow up – a secret network of super-awesome female spies traveling around and saving the world. Absolutely ludicrous, and I love it that way. Supposedly this is part of a series (“Athena Force”), but my library seems to only have this book. Thankfully the library also has a form where I can recommend things to add to the collection ("pretty please buy more books about hot female spies so I can live vicariously through the books!").
Don’t Look Down
by Suzanne Enoch
Sequel to Flirting with Danger; former cat burglar is now engaged to British billionaire (seriously, the accent AND the bank account? I’m in love) and goes legit, becoming a PI who has to solve the murder of her first client. As always, though I liked the characters the first time I was okay with not knowing what happened during their happily-ever-after phase.
Drop Dead Gorgeous
by Linda Howard
Sequel to To Die For; again, I was happy when we left the couple alone and happy and alive at the end of the book. But no, we have to have more random attempts on her life.
The Deadliest Strain
by Jan Coffey
Chasing a rare, infections strain of bacteria. There was potential for a romance that was never explored - that made me sad. I want either non-fiction involving bacteria OR fiction involving sex. This was neither.
Village Affairs: A Mystery
by Cassandra Chan
British, in an ambiguous time period, aristocrat/amateur sleuth helps out when his Scotland Yard friend gets called in to work a case. At least he has a high-strung model girlfriend to make things interesting...
Body Language
by Suzanne Brockmann
Best friends are attracted to each other but each thinks they don't stand a chance with the other. They pretend to be together so that she can make some jerk she works with jealous, pretend starts feeling real, then big misunderstanding and argument, then all happy in the end.
Seven Days and Seven Nights
by Wendy Wax
Rival radio talk-show hosts have to share a small apartment for a week. They have some history, are reluctantly attracted, etc. Poor communication ensues for a while but is anyone really surprised that they get together in the end?
Public Displays of Affection
by Susan Donovan
There seem to be a LOT of books out there based on the premise that this naïve girl has a hot fling (often on the side of a road) with a nameless but gorgeous guy, then goes off and marries someone else who proceeds to die, and then the nameless guy miraculously moves in next door and they realize they were meant to be together forever. Does this really ever happen?
Bad Girls Don’t
by Cathie Liz
Belly Dancer/free spirit extraordinaire is just what the uptight cop mourning his dead wife needs. (gag)
TailSpin
by Catherine Coulter
The Sherlock/Savich series really isn’t doing it for me anymore.
No Safe Place
by JoAnn Ross
Cop gets dragged into helping investigate the disappearance/death of her estranged twin (con artist) sister, with the assistance of a former cop who went bad (supposedly). Everyone’s redeemed in the end.
Kiss of Death
by Meryl Sawyer
Iraq war vet inherits an estate from his mysterious uncle, there’s lots of murder attempts that throw him together with the caretaker who, as usual, butts heads with him but is reluctantly attracted, etc. Don’t remember how it’s resolved.
Wizard’s Daughter
by Catherine Coulter
I remember a bit of this. It was weird, and involved a trip to an alternate realm at the end. Catherine doesn’t usually do the supernatural stuff. Very bizarre.
EDIT: to anyone who gets this multiple times, sorry! I kept finding books that were left out...Labels: Brit lit, burglary, crap, girl power, hunky armed forces or government operatives, irresponsible parents, melodrama, romantic "suspense", trashy romance
posted by ket at
12:42 PM
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Monday, July 28, 2008
I kindof want to quit my job and try this...
The Little Lady Agency
by Hester Browne
Melissa, the pliable, naive, obedient daughter of a scandal-attracting member of Parliament, is fired from her dead-end job, and, after accidentally becoming a call girl for an afternoon, starts a similar-but-not-quite service where, instead of providing sex, provides men with fake girlfriends to appease overbearing mothers, dates for weddings, advice buying clothing or gifts, and so forth. But because her father totally wouldn't approve, she dons a blonde wig, adopts a new persona, and calls herself "Honey", which is a bonus because the men don't really have to remember her name.
And then she meets Jonathan, an American who's now in charge of the office where she used to work and who needs help acclimating to London on top of his recent separation/divorce; he hires her all the time, rather wanting to hire her exclusively, and they have some chemistry, but it's weird because she's hired by the hour and they both acknowledge it kindof, but he takes her as his date to everything and she's his hostesss for a party and so forth.
It all comes to a climax at Mel's sister's wedding, where she's in the party and organized the whole thing despite her father acting like an ass the entire time, and Jonathan figures out who she is just before the wedding and wants to take her as his date, and she tries to be both Honey and herself, and it all kindof goes up in flames before Jonathan professes his love for her, not Honey, though she always thought he would never fall for the real her, and her father kindof apologizes, and she ends up happy. Yay!
I could totally wear a wig and retro clothing like it's normal, and there are so many men that need help. Anyone want to fund a start-up?
And then there's a preview at the end of the book for a sequel, where Jonathan is off in France and, though he asked her to not do the major makeovers/pseudo-dates anymore, she's about to do her grandmother a favor and transform a playboy prince. I see bad things happening here. Couldn't they have just left it with happily ever after??Labels: Brit lit, girl power, high society, irresponsible parents, trashy romance
posted by ket at
10:37 PM
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Monday, June 30, 2008
Well Wishing
Title: Diary of a Fairy Godmother
Author: Esme Raji Codell
Bookmark: the flag from a Hershey's Kiss. Have you noticed they don't all say "Hershey's" anymore?
There is exactly one thing wrong with this book: there's no Newbery Medal on the cover. No awards, accolades, or high recognition of any kind, and that's just tragic, because this book is fantastic.
Hunky Dory, a promising young witch, accompanies her Auntie Malice to crash the christening party for the new baby princess. There she first encounters FGs, each of whom has bestowed various gifts for the new royal baby. After Malice curses the child to die at 15 from a spinning wheel prick, Hunky amends "death" to "100 years sleep." Thus begins the greatest career path story ever.
As much fun as it is to watch Hunky Forrest Gump her way through every fairy tale you've ever read--and many you've probably never heard of--it's just as great to see Codell's take on witch culture and language ("oh, my badness!"), including the best tea party scene in all of literature. The clever language , storyline, and weaving of every witchy tale in our collective consciousness (ever wonder where the good witches in Oz originated? or wishing wells?), make it worth a read for anybody, but what elevates it from Really Great Children's Literature to Medal-Worthy Children's Literature is the wisdom, observation, and general advice sprinkled throughout the book, usually quoted from the famous witch text Be the One With the Wand, but also often instilled through the characters' own insights. These are gathered in a handy index at the end of the book, just before a list of other great books about witches (I was happy see that I had read, or was familiar with, nearly a third of the list). Even though it's good for everyone, the preponderance of female characters (and yes, themes) forces me to add a label that I'm shocked hasn't already been created by my cohorts... and to recommend Diary to my evil little cousin.Labels: children's literature, finding oneself, girl power
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